Many business forms such as mailing labels, invoices, as well as a variety of others, are provided with an adhesive whereby part of or all of the form may be adhered to another object. In some cases, the adhesive employed is a remoistenable adhesive. Their use requires a source of moisture for remoistening the adhesive such as a sponge, brush or the like. Consequently, use of such forms can be somewhat messy due to the moisture that must be added to the adhesive.
Moreover, if too much moisture is applied to the adhesive, the adhesive becomes diluted and has insufficient strength to create a secure bond between the business form and the object to which it is to be adhered.
Consequently, there has been increasing use of paper provided with pressure sensitive adhesive on one face thereof rather than a remoistenable adhesive in the production of such forms. The use of pressure sensitive adhesive requires the presence of an additional element in the form construction, namely, a so-called "release liner" which completely covers the pressure sensitive adhesive and which must be removed to expose the adhesive when the form is to be adhered to another object. Typically, the release liner is formed of a relatively waxy silicone coated paper which adheres to the pressure sensitive adhesive to some degree but is sufficiently compatible therewith as to be easily removed from the paper backed with the pressure sensitive adhesive by the simple act of peeling.
To facilitate removal of the release liner, the same is usually slit at one or more locations. By arching the form in the vicinity of the slit, the edges of the release liner at the slit lose their adherence to the pressure sensitive adhesive and project away from the arched face of the form so that they may be grasped manually and pulled to remove the release liner from the form.
The process is a relatively easy one but is nonetheless not without its drawbacks. For one, because the release liner is slit, it is necessary to twice perform the act of removal since the slit divides the release liner into two parts, each of which must be removed. Additionally, if some care is not taken in the process of arching the form to release the edges of the release liner from the pressure sensitive adhesive, the form may be permanently bent or wrinkled giving it an undesirable appearance.
And where the business form with pressure sensitive adhesive is a multiple ply form, a further difficulty may present itself. In the manipulative steps required to remove the release liner, there comes the possibility that one or more plies of the multiple ply form may become dissociated from the remainder of the form prematurely if some care is not exercised to prevent such an occurrence.